Railway Sandboxes vs Smol Machines

Railway Sandboxes costs $0.069444 per vCPU-hour and Smol Machines costs $0.05 per vCPU-hour. Railway Sandboxes runs full VMs. Smol Machines runs microVMs.

Updated

Railway Sandboxes

Isolation
Full VM
Free tier
$5 trial credit for 30 days
Max session
Not listed

Smol Machines

Isolation
MicroVM
Free tier
$100 credit, one time
Max session
Not listed

What is different

8 fields differ. The rest are the same or not listed.

Railway Sandboxes
Smol Machines
vCPU, per hour
Railway Sandboxes: $0.069444
Smol Machines: $0.05
RAM, per GiB-hour
Railway Sandboxes: $0.069444
Smol Machines: $0.0162
Free tier
Railway Sandboxes: $5 trial credit for 30 days
Smol Machines: $100 credit, one time
Paid plan from
Railway Sandboxes: $5 / month
Smol Machines: Pay as you go
Concurrent sandboxes
Railway Sandboxes: Up to 100
Smol Machines: Up to 1,000
Isolation
Railway Sandboxes: Full VM
Smol Machines: MicroVM
Snapshots
Railway Sandboxes:
Smol Machines: No
SDKs
Railway Sandboxes: TypeScript
Smol Machines: TypeScript, Python, Rust

Full comparison

18 fields, at each provider's list price

Pricing

vCPU, per hour
Railway Sandboxes: $0.069444
Smol Machines: $0.05
RAM, per GiB-hour
Railway Sandboxes: $0.069444
Smol Machines: $0.0162
Storage
Railway Sandboxes: Not listed
Smol Machines: $0.0001 per GiB-hour
Free tier
Railway Sandboxes: $5 trial credit for 30 days
Smol Machines: $100 credit, one time
Paid plan from
Railway Sandboxes: $5 / month
Smol Machines: Pay as you go
Billing
Railway Sandboxes: Active CPU time only
Smol Machines: Active CPU time only

Limits

Max session
Railway Sandboxes: Not listed
Smol Machines: Not listed
Idle stop
Railway Sandboxes: After 30 minutes
Smol Machines: Not listed
Largest sandbox
Railway Sandboxes: 32 vCPU · 32 GiB
Smol Machines: 32 vCPU · 32 GiB
Concurrent sandboxes
Railway Sandboxes: Up to 100
Smol Machines: Up to 1,000

Platform

Isolation
Railway Sandboxes: Full VM
Smol Machines: MicroVM
GPU
Railway Sandboxes: Not listed
Smol Machines: No
Snapshots
Railway Sandboxes:
Smol Machines: No
Pause and resume
Railway Sandboxes: Not listed
Smol Machines:

Developer

SDKs
Railway Sandboxes: TypeScript
Smol Machines: TypeScript, Python, Rust
Integrations
Railway Sandboxes: Claude Code
Smol Machines: Not listed

Trust

License
Railway Sandboxes: Not listed
Smol Machines: Apache-2.0
BYOC
Railway Sandboxes: Not listed
Smol Machines: Not listed

Hourly cost

One sandbox running for one hour

Railway Sandboxes
Smol Machines
1 vCPU · 2 GiB
Railway Sandboxes: $0.208
Smol Machines: $0.082
2 vCPU · 4 GiB
Railway Sandboxes: $0.417
Smol Machines: $0.165
4 vCPU · 8 GiB
Railway Sandboxes: $0.833
Smol Machines: $0.330

Compute only, at list rates.

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Which one fits

Based on the fields above

Railway Sandboxes fits when

  • You want each sandbox to be a full VM.
  • You use Claude Code.
  • You need snapshots.
  • You need SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA and GDPR.

Smol Machines fits when

  • You want to pay only for usage, with no plan fee.
  • You want each sandbox in its own microVM.
  • You want an open-source platform (Apache-2.0) that you can self-host.
  • You want the lower list price: $0.165 against $0.417 an hour for 2 vCPU and 4 GiB.

More comparisons

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